Same thing that makes you laugh makes you cry

Ozzie Guillen put his foot in his mouth once again. It will be interesting to see how/if he gets out of this one. If you have been vacationing on another planet, Ozzie recently did an interview with Time magazine. The opening line of the piece starts with Guillen saying “I love Fidel Castro.” Interesting choice of words considering where he is now managing

Marlins skipper Ozzie Guillen

(Miami) and who his fans/customers are (Cuban-Americans).

I have gotten to know a number of Cuban-Americans and every one of them has a very deep and personal hatred of Castro and his regime. The stories they told of their relatives’ persecution and hardships were amazing. I heard a Cuban-American sports commentator say that “Castro is our Hitler.” Another asked how Americans would feel if a New York manager said “I love Osama bin Laden.” Baseball has been able to chalk most of Guillen’s comments over the years as just “Ozzie being Ozzie.” This one may be different.

When I heard about his comment, the title of this post came to mind … “The same thing that makes you laugh, makes you cry.” In other words, often your best traits end up being your worst as well. In Ozzie’s case, his outgoing, social personality is his best trait but it also gets him in trouble. It’s like a student who is very social and well liked but doesn’t know when to shut up when he’s in class. Of course, this applies in baseball too.

A team with a ton of power fails to work on the “small ball” side of the game and gets shut down on above-average pitching. (sound familiar Phillies’ fans?)

A pitcher who throws very hard but always tries to blow guys away instead of focusing on location and changing speeds in a jam.

A base runner who can fly who makes numerous base running mistakes because he thought his speed would always overcome any lack of knowledge on how to run the bases.

An infielder with a canon who never learned the proper footwork of fielding because he could always rely on his arm strength.

A question every team/player should ask is “how might our/my strength also be a weakness?” The answers you come up with should give you some good ideas on what to work on. Hopefully Ozzie will take this advice too.